How to Stop Spam Phone Calls

How to Stop Spam Phone Calls

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The number one feature that I would like for the iPhone is the ability to have a special ringtone for anyone that was not in my Contacts. That ring tone would be silent so that if a spammer got through it wouldn’t bother me, they would just go to voicemail. If it was a legitimate call then they would go to voicemail as well and I would call them back.

As it is, I hear my phone ring, see that it isn’t someone I know and manually silence my phone. By having a “silent” ringtone for non-Contacts, I would skip this step.

I think this is possible in Android and it is probably the only reason that I would buy an Android phone over an iPhone the next time I want to update my phone.

Source: How to Stop Spam Phone Calls

The phone rings. Do you assume it’s an actual human person, trying to reach you? I generally assume it’s a robot, calling to “inform” me that my car warranty is about to expire or that I’ve “earned” a free trip to the Caribbean.

And I’m not alone. There were an estimated 26.3 billion robocalls to US phone numbers in 2018, which was a massive increase from the year before. Most of these spam calls come from scammers using software dialers to call as many phone numbers as possible. Enough people fall for these scams for the practice to be profitable, which is tragic in and of itself. The rest of us, meanwhile, are getting more spam calls than actual calls, interrupting our daily lives, including during work hours—and the problem is only getting worse.
Why should a teenager in America be afraid of a Congresswoman?

Why should a teenager in America be afraid of a Congresswoman?

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Some people are very nice and helpful to others…and some people are not. Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez seems to be firmly in the latter camp.

Check out this interaction on Twitter. Why in the world should this young man be afraid of Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez? Isn’t she an elected member of Congress that is charged with the responsibility to serve America and protect its Constitution?

Here is the young man’s response.

And then

For me, maybe Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez should leave Congress and CJ Pearson should replace her.

I have not seen a statement from the Congresswoman as to why she should be feared by this young man. Is it because CJ Pearson appears to be African American (at least according to his Twitter image)? Is she racist? Or, is it because he is a male? Or, is it because he is young? Or, is it because he appears to be a conservative? Or, is it a combination of all four, a young, male, conservative African American?

Regardless, the oath of office of a Congressperson would mean that no citizen of the US should ever fear an elected official.

So if the Congresswoman is that power-hungry then maybe we should all be afraid.
All Aboard!!!

All Aboard!!!

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I am on a lot of planes. This “boarding the plane” video was very interesting. Actually, I think boarding times would go a LOT faster if airlines would simply take your suitcase for free and hold it underneath the plane and return it to you when you land. I have heard of the alternating row/alternating side solution before (watch to the end) but never seen it explained so well.

Header Photo by Free-Photos (Pixabay)
Cool video to help save the coral!!

Cool video to help save the coral!!

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https://www.facebook.com/bbc/videos/471770686665765/

 

The industry of coral propagation seems to be reaching a state of enlightenment where the knowledge of fundamental procedures for the simple division of reef invertebrates is becoming time-tested and even commonplace. It is wonderful to see so many corals in captivity that once were thought to be impossible to keep alive not so long ago now routinely pruned like shrubbery. In gross terms, the captive propagation of coral may be categorized by the action of the event: induced passively, naturally occurring or imposed. Passive induction would include strategies of division that neither result in the immediate production of a free-living clone, nor will they necessarily occur unassisted. Rather, such techniques are methods for spurring budding through fission. Some examples of the induced passive division include slicing or notching the periphery of the stolon mat of hardy soft corals such as Star Polyp (Pachyclavularia) or nicking the exposed and illuminated stalk of a leaning (or forcibly tilted) stalk of an Alcyoniid, which often spurs the budding growth of beautiful multi-stalked colonies. Natural strategies of captive coral propagation occur with various manipulations and/or imitations of natural dynamics of the reef environment and are being seen with increasing regularity. They are indeed some of the most interesting events to behold and the subject of another discussion altogether. Indeed, harnessed natural reproductive events like planulae harvest are the future of our trade.

For more than a few years, however, the most common coral propagation technique has been the imposed fragmentation of soft and stony reef corals through cutting, breaking or sawing. By definition, these are deliberate actions taken to asexually propagate a coral and produce divisions that are free-living clones of the parent/donor. They are the fastest and most popular way to farm corals to date, and they are the foundation of our cottage industry. Indeed, imposed fragmentary techniques will likely dominate coral farming until larval rearing techniques are refined.

Header photo found at http://www.coralvita.co/coral-farming/
Assad’s homes and his inner circle’s homes should be blown to pieces

Assad’s homes and his inner circle’s homes should be blown to pieces

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There is a lot of talk about what is an appropriate response to Syria’s mass killing of its citizens with chemical weapons. I think the solution is quite simple. The US doesn’t want to kill innocent life so we should simply give a list of 24 locations that will be destroyed sometime in the next 7 days. We encourage the residents of Syria to evacuate those locations and an area at least 1-mile perimeter around each location and explain that some but not all of the locations will be obliterated in the next 7 days.

I don’t care about 15 of those locations – they can be decoys for all I care about. The first location needs to be Bashar al-Assad’s palace in Damascus on Mount Mazzeh. It is his primary residence and the place that his family lives. Level it. The second location needs to be the old palace that Assad still sometimes lives in – Tishreen Palace. Once again it should be leveled to dust. The 3rd location(s) should be the home(s) of his brother Maher al-Assad. After that we should level the home(s) of Assad’s first cousin Rami Makhlouf. Then the homes of Ali Mamluk, Abdul Fatah Qudsiya, Rafiq Shahada, and Jamil Hassan (all part of his inner circle).

We should list those locations so that families and children (and workers and slaves) can be evacuated and not be killed because they had the unfortunate reality to be related to a tyrant. After that evacuation, just level their homes. Make this personal. No military targets after the tyrants killed innocent lives with horrible weapons.

You might disagree. That is my opinion.

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